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XXVI. 0« the Nerves of the Face ; being a second paper on that subject. By . 

 Charles Bell, Esq. Fellow of the Royal Society. 



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Read May 28, 1829. 



L HAVE to beg the indulgence of the Society to some minute details of ana- 

 tomy, for the sake of those deductions which can be attained by no other 

 means : and that a zeal for its cultivation may be preserved among us. There 

 is an obvious pi'actical benefit derived from anatomy, but the public do not 

 comprehend its importance as a science. It is to the Royal Society that those 

 who prosecute this science must look for countenance in their slow and painful 

 investigations. 



Nine years ago, at the request of our late President, I submitted to the 

 Society a paper on the Nervous System ; in which I arranged the nerves sti'ictly 

 according to the anatomy, and illustrated the principles of the arrangement, 

 by exhibiting the different functions of the Nerves of the Face. On presenting 

 a second paper on the same part of the nervous system after so considerable a 

 lapse of time, there will be some novelty both in the facts and in the illustra- 

 tions ; yet I have more gratification in showing that after the most minute in- 

 quiries in different countries, my positions drawn from the anatomy have been 

 admitted, and my reasoning on the experiments, with one exception, found to 

 be correct. Confident in the accuracy of my deductions from the anatomy of 

 the fifth nerve, I had attributed to one of its branches a function which be- 

 longs to another branch of the same nerve. The subject will form a part of 

 the present paper. 



After the announcement of the facts in my first paper, the inquiry became 

 interesting from its application to medical practice. I must take another 

 opportunity of thanking those gentlemen who have so liberally afforded addi- 

 tional proofs of the truth of my principles. I must restrict myself in refer- 



